


Band-aid

by coalitiongirl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-20
Updated: 2012-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-31 02:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/338825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike and Dawn have a confrontation, sometime in mid-S9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Band-aid

She’s been kind of- not really, but kind of, in her head, when she’s angry, when she wants to rail at the  _wrongness_  of it all- planning this for so long, avoiding the actual deed and coming up with reasons why the time isn’t right. She doesn’t really want to have this conversation, to rehash the old and awful and painful, and she doesn’t want to do it at Buffy’s baby shower. But it’s less than a month before Buffy’s due, and she’s running out of time for said confrontation.   
  
So first chance she gets, she’s stomping over to Spike where he’s spiking the punch (and putting aside a flask of untainted juice for Buffy, she notices absently). “You’re going to hurt my sister,” Dawn informs him.   
  
He blinks.   
  
“Guys always do. And you have before,” she says, her eyes challenging him to disagree. He doesn’t. “And I don’t care if you aren’t the father of her baby. She counts on you too much for that to matter.” Dawn had been reluctantly supportive of that fact at first, when Spike had helped Buffy through those first rocky months by slaying alongside her and picking up her vitamins and catering to her needs. (And hadn’t that night at Buffy’s been a fun one, when the girls had decided that Buffy was desperately craving chocolate and Spike had glowered at them but gotten it anyway?) He was an ass, and she hated him, but at least he was being helpful.   
  
But it had gotten disturbing of late, when Buffy had spoken about being roomies with Spike as casually as she’d discussed the brand of crib they were buying, when she’d taken Dawn and Anaheed to see “their” new apartment, when everyone else seemed okay with this except Xander (who still didn’t know) and her. They aren’t even dating- though Dawn severely doubts that now- just “friends”.    
  
Dawn had once had a friend named Spike. She’s fully aware of how lethal losing him can be to already fragile emotions.   
  
“Counts on me, does she?” He sounds pleased, and Dawn shoots him a patented Summers Glare. He arches a brow at her, unafraid. “What’s your point, Dawn?” Her name is cold and unfriendly when he says it, and she stiffens automatically.   
  
“Are you sleeping with her?”   
  
“Not your business.”   
  
“Is that a yes?”   
  
He looks away from her, his eyes suddenly soft, and she follows his gaze to where Buffy’s sitting amid a pile of gifts, happily discussing what appears to be an assortment of baby books with a very uncomfortable Eldre Koh. When he turns back to her, he’s just as distant as before, and something inside of her wrenches at his indifference in the face of her demands. “No. What’s it to you, anyway?”   
  
His words sting, the implication behind them more raw than usual. She remembers the day that Buffy had first come to her to tell her about the baby, remembers snapping at her sister and telling her to stop trying to get them all killed. To stop slaying. And Buffy had just left, and Spike had come by later that day more enraged than she’d seen in years, and only then had she found out exactly why her sister had needed her.   
  
“You don’t deserve to know,” Spike had told her that night, and she’d hated him for saying it nearly as much as she’d hated herself in that moment. It’s been months of revived sisterhood and she still hates herself for it.   
  
She lashes out at him now, angry that he’d insinuate that she doesn’t care about her sister again. “You’re awful for her,” she snaps, and it’s bitter and incensed and just a little bit intense envy. “You totally took advantage of her when she was depressed, you came back to life and never said anything, you tried to  _rape_  her! And you’re going to make her miserable again because that’s what you  _do_ , you bastard, you just care about sex and not about…about hurting people who count on you, and now you’re going to hurt her, too!” She’s breathing hard when she finishes talking, her eyes stinging with furious tears that she can’t seem to hold back, not even with Spike staring at her, slow understanding dawning on his face.    
  
She doesn’t want him to see whatever he’s seeing in her eyes, doesn’t want him to  _notice_  things about what she’s saying because they’re so far past him  _noticing_ her that it burns at her just to think about it, to think about Buffy and Spike in their happy little bubble again, removed from friends and family and having a happy little family of their own-   
  
“Dawn.” And this time it isn’t quite as cold when he says it, even if it’s still formal and remote. “I’m never going to hurt your sis again.” There’s an odd sense of certainty that Spike’s rather good at conveying, even when she knows that his word is crap and she wants to rail at him for being so  _stupid_  and  _obtuse_ .    
  
So she mutters, “Bull,” and turns around to stalk off, when a pale hand snakes out to catch her by the shoulder and hold her in place, her back to him as he speaks (and somehow it’s easier to listen like this).    
  
“And I’m sorry.” The quiet confidence is muted, his words simple and earnest.   
  
She blinks away tears. “You didn’t rape  _me_ .”   
  
“I never meant to…I just got so lost, Bit.” It isn’t pleading. He doesn’t plead anymore, not since the soul, and it just makes her uncomfortable, the quiet, simple way he speaks. “I got caught up in the nastiness, and I didn’t forget you-“   
  
“You did!” She spins around, noticing as she does that Buffy’s staring at them, a troubled frown on her face. She lowers her voice. “You were friends with me to get close to Buffy, you only took care of me because she asked you to, and the one time I needed you that year, you were gone! You were never my friend. You used me.” Buffy’s starting to get up, and they both instinctively flash her wide smiles. If there’s one thing Dawn doesn’t want to do, it’s to agitate Buffy, not after the huge overreaction that had been the Peanut Butter on the Couch Incident and the bawling aftermath. She continues, teeth gritted under her grin. “And then you came back and decided you were too  _good_  for me, with Buffy around-“   
  
“You told me you’d set me on fire!”   
  
She scowls. “Well, I wanted to hurt you!”   
  
“You did!”   
  
“Good!”    
  
They glare at each other again, all pretenses of friendliness gone, and Dawn’s brought back to a time before Spike-and-Buffy, when she could flirt with danger and let him treat her like an adult (probably long before he should have), when she genuinely believed that they were going to be friends like the heroes of a subversive film, vampire and little girl hanging out together in a crypt, them against the world. Before she’d been stripped of her innocence and lost everything, and never really got it back again.   
  
But now she can see it in his eyes, the same sorrow for what’s been lost, guilt and shame and defeat, and she wonders if it may be something they can recapture. “I hurt you?” she questions in a small voice.   
  
“You did,” he repeats, and his voice is grave but not condescending. “I’d thought you loved me. And that-“ He stops, chokes on the words. “I deserved it. But I missed the little troublemaker I’d once thought of as my only friend.”   
  
And it’s weird, because they’d never really hugged before, not when she was younger and in the lofty stage where she never wanted to be treated like a child by her gorgeous vampire best friend, but now the most natural thing in the world seems to be to take those final few steps forward and wrap her arms around him. She inhales leather and alcohol and the vague stink of cologne he must have realized was a bad idea midway, and her eyes close for a moment as his own arms tentatively pull her in, as she’s surrounded by the cool warmth of her onetime friend. “I don’t forgive you for what you did to Buffy,” she murmurs. Somehow, it’s important that he knows that, even now that they’re reaching forgiveness at last.   
  
“Seems like someone shouldn’t, yeah?” And she hears the quiver in his voice, the odd dissatisfaction that Buffy isn’t punishing him more, and she thinks she understands.   
  
They stay locked together for another moment, not speaking, not confessing- there are no more confessions for tonight, but she wonders if maybe she can talk to him soon, about Xander and her doubts and worries that they’ve ruined something real- and when they pull away, Buffy’s standing right behind Spike, her eyes wistful and longing.   
  
Dawn opens her mouth to speak (and doesn’t this feel suddenly like déjà vu?), but Buffy’s already ducking her rather sizable girth under Spike’s arm, and his hand feathers a path along her back before settling at her side. Buffy turns to meet his eyes, her own contented and suffused with warmth.   
  
“I’m glad you worked things out,” she says, and when she turns to look at Dawn, Dawn almost protests, because her sister rarely looks as happy these days as she does when she’s close to Spike.    
  
But Buffy’s still smiling, and Dawn’s suddenly certain that Spike won’t hurt any members of the Summers family again, older, younger, or unborn. Not like before.   
  
“Me, too,” she says, and she slides her arm through her sister’s and they all walk back to the party together.   
  
It’s a start.


End file.
